Thursday 8 June 2023
It’s all water supply and midges these days. I’m going to end water and midges here for today.
My mum is coming to stay for four nights from tomorrow and today is shopping day. Shopping day also means a selection of chores, the excitement of being around town. As usual, I will not be going to just one town, I will be going to three, maybe even four today. It’s a veritable tour. Today will be Innerleithen, Peebles, Galashiels and possibly Selkirk. I will be collecting a few things from auction, returning a broken deckchair, going to the weekly fish van in Peebles, a baker, a butcher, returning a t-shirt, posting a letter and, Selkirk, as I’ll be passing through, might be a coffee stop. I actually kind of enjoy shopping days like this, especially when the weather is nice. The scenery is beautiful.
Tomorrow morning, I will probably do the big pre-mum-visiting clean. If I’m in the right mood, I might enjoy that too. However, the Bluetooth speaker in the bathroom might not be working and I have taken to listening to music upstairs through that. Ah, but, how could I forget, I have a HiFi set up in the study/spare room so I will listen to whole albums rather than Spotify playlists. Very satisfying.
I made a great dinner last night, more pinks and oranges than usual for me and good use of random fridge things. A salad with prawn cocktail, prawns, feta and watermelon and sweet potato chips with paprika.
Now that I, through Chris and a friend of his, have discovered the Cornell University bird recognition app, Merlin, I have been recording bird song most days. That is the kind of thing I can easily obsess about. My favourite recent one, one I have never knowingly heard before, was a common grasshopper warbler. It does actually sound a bit like a grasshopper. Over the last few days, there have also been our regulars: willow warbler; meadow pipit; Eurasian wren; song thrush; common chaffinch; Eurasian siskin; Eurasian blackbird; barn swallow; European goldfinch and a sedge warbler. There is also Mr Pheasant, whose rattly screech is easy to recognise. We are a little concerned for Mrs Pheasant and their chicks; no sighting for quite a while, though one sighting of Mrs Pheasant a week ago.
Our neighbour told us that there was a cock pheasant one year who had some issues with a red ride-on mower the neighbour used. He thinks it was the colour. Whenever the neighbour used that red ride-on mower, the pheasant, Philip, would chase after the mower as if trying to fend off a rival. The neighbour said he was always on the look-our for Philip. However, one day Philip suddenly appeared and tried to run in front of the mower, which clipped him. Philip ran off and was seen again for the next few days, then disappeared. Probably just to pheasant hospital right, and rehabilitation elsewhere. Pheasants live life on the edge, particularly around here, though I believe it’s April to September when they’re free from the risk of being shot in addition to all other pheasant perils.
I have been doing some almost-daily weeding and tidying of the garden. Considering how much of the garden is deliberately wild, it makes it easier to see the neat bits. It’s slow progress but I’m beginning to enjoy it more. I have realised that going out when I would normally not go out, ie in the sunniest parts of the day, works out well here as no or fewer midges. As a result, I have a few tan lines, though that includes panda eyes from my glasses, unfortunately. My mum is good with garden stuff so it’ll be useful to have her sort my priorities out. We ordered a strimmer yesterday, which has hedge trimming and branch cutting attachments. There is a chance I may get quite into that. The previous owners made a willow arbour which had gone rogue and was sprouting out branches. It annoyed me. On Sunday, Mitch regained control of it. I wasn’t convinced I’d be particularly excited about a willow arbour, but now it’s all woven and does form an arch, I like it, though it offers enough shade for midges to be able to stay out and poised for attack when it’s otherwise too hot and sunny for them.
No, no, no midges; the last sentence will not be about midges.
We have some small rhododendron bushes up the ‘ski slope’ and they are finally coming into bloom. Our microclimate is significantly further behind the rest of the country than I had fully realised. I sat on a park bench in Galashiels, about twenty-five miles away, on Saturday with a backdrop of rhododendrons and azaleas in full bloom. I think they’ve been and gone in London.
